Lord, Belief Is Hard!

Jan closed her Bible, turned off the reading lamp, and stared into the dark living room. It was 5:30 on Saturday morning. The drug addiction of her adult son and the cancer struggles of a dear friend weighed on her mind and heart. After a wakeful, restless night, she was up early and had read several psalms, hoping for direction, comfort, explanation, or encouragement. The verses about God hearing, caring, and protecting voiced her desires, but they did not seem to touch her emptiness and hopelessness. Though she felt that it was probably useless, she said quietly, “Lord, these psalms sound so nice, and I know your Word is true, but I can’t say I believe what I just read.” What Is Belief? At the least, belief is mental assent to a concept. It’s a choice to accept a premise, and it often results in trust or commitment that influences one’s life. Belief is a form of submission to a concept or even to another person. Clearly, we believe many things daily. Some of our beliefs have been clear from the start (if I go out in the rain, I will get wet), while we may have learned some the hard way (if I’m late paying my taxes, I will be charged a penalty). Biblical concepts are unbendingly true and totally dependable. God’s truth is as eternal and unchangeable as he is. We know that about him, but we are often confronted with our unbelief when it comes to steady trust and commitment to what he tells us about himself and about how his providence deals with us. Why is that? What Is Unbelief? It is not a play on words to say that believers can fall into unbelief! Anybody can! Often! We’re not talking about losing one’s salvation; we are talking about living with gnawing, functional doubt that God is who he says he is and that his promises are for sure. This kind of functional unbelief is essentially a lack of accepting and submitting every day to what we already know about God (and mentally believe to be true). Why are we not easily able to trust? The answer to that sends us back to the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve chose to live by their own “truth” instead of living in submission and obedience to their Creator. That type of rebellion (our “fallenness”) has been passed along to all their descendants. Our fallen instinct is to turn to and trust in something other than our Creator . . . ourselves. Any degree of trust and belief and submission to God and his truth is a grace-work of the Holy Spirit to change our hearts. What Are Some Counterfeit Beliefs? Human beings will believe in something. We are wired to be believers. But that “wiring” is distorted because of our fallenness. So we look for and create substitutes for God and his truth. We may believe in our own wisdom and ideas that form a self-centered, self-serving worldview. We may listen to the culture and our unsaved peers. Their philosophies will usually regard themselves as the only power and authority we need. However, as in Jan’s case, the Lord often allows life to bring us to points where we need real comfort, direction, peace, and answers. Those needs can only be genuinely filled by our Lord and what we find in Scripture that points us to him. Sadly, many of us would rather create and follow our counterfeits, but believing in them leads to dead ends every time. What Cultivates Trusting Belief? Let’s see what Jan has discovered since that Saturday morning. As it turns out, she did not just get up and go about her day without talking further with her heavenly Father. She desperately needed some answers. That’s step number one: Talk with your Father. Psalm 62:8 says to “pour out your heart” to him. Those need not be neat and tidy prayers. Be honest with yourself and with him. Admit the concepts that you struggle with most. Do you doubt his love? Do you struggle against his timetable (waiting is hard!)? Do you need to back off from manipulating and literally “be quiet” and let him “be God” (Psalm 46:10)? Jan also realized that she was measuring God’s faithfulness, love, power, and so on by what she could see and according to the solution she envisioned as best. She had forgotten some essentials: The Holy Spirit is the one who does heart-change work. The Holy Spirit’s work is often hidden and quiet. The Lord’s plans are perfect and sure (Isaiah 25:1). The Lord is faithful and has only our good and his glory in mind (Jeremiah 31:3; Romans 8:28). Jan also had to admit that she had been neglecting what used to be a strong, personal habit of Bible reading and prayer. By God’s grace, she turned to those things on that Saturday morning; she realized how spiritually starved and thirsty she had become! She knows now that she needs the Lord’s grace and help to deepen and maintain spiritual health. Regardless of what the Lord uses to show us our chronic or occasional unbelief, the two-part antidote is always the same: Talk to your Father (intense, honest prayer). Listen to your Father (immerse yourself in Scripture). Ask for his grace and work in your heart to help you replace unbelief with TRUST. Lord, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24, NIV) The post Lord, Belief Is Hard! appeared first on Harvest USA.